Overview
Binary mass transfer (MT) is a critical step in the formation of many important and exotic astrophysical phenomena, including gravitational wave sources, millisecond pulsars, and Type Ia supernovae. Despite its importance, the details of how MT affects both orbital and stellar evolution remain poorly understood. One powerful probe of this process is close binaries hosting white dwarfs (WDs) with main-sequence companions, which interacted prior to the formation of the WD when its progenitor expanded into a giant. The third data release of the Gaia mission has led to the discovery of an unprecedentedly large sample of WDMS binaries covering a wide range of orbital periods and WD masses. In this talk, I will provide an overview of some of my work using these systems to constrain MT models, with a focus on population inference through forward modeling.